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Wrong, Dumb, Stupid.

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craft

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It seems all I ever do is manage my mistakes. If I'm not correcting a mistake of commission then I’m generally thinking about a mistake of omission, in fact I spend so much time consumed in what I could have done better that periodical reviews revealing positive progress to the big picture come as an improbable surprise.

To rub salt into the wound of my daily grind of stuff ups, I subject myself to forums full of people, many of whom seem to portray that they understand all the variables and never get anything wrong, which seems strange when we are only working with probabilities at best.

So this is just a thread to say I get it wrong and often and I’m proud of it. It makes me what I am.

A couple of quotes that help me deal with being human.

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed
Michael Jordan.
Click to expand...

The best loser is the long-term winner
Phantom of the pits
Click to expand...

Misery loves company. Maybe this thread could be a refuge, a confession for the fallible.
No Omniscient forum posters allowed.
 
craft said:
So this is just a thread to say I get it wrong and often and I’m proud of it. It makes me what I am.
Click to expand...

Well craft you are not alone. I've had a few blunders in my life too, the biggest was 25k when a company I had my debentures with went into liquidation. Had some pretty bad stock losses too. And currently, well I think I sold my USD a bit early:banghead:. Yes indeed, we all get it darn wrong from time to time.:eek:
 
Is this about the DTA/DTL thing?:D:p:

I make mistakes all the time. The worst is that feeling when you are absolutely sure you're 100% right and then out of left field comes something you never even thought of. Sometimes I just plain have no idea what the hell something means and completely misinterpret it. We're all human, it happens, all we can do is learn from it. Even Buffet only gets 8/10 right. Even in a recent thread with yourself, I ended up going off on some weird tangent that confused me as much as it did yourself!
 
McLovin said:
Is this about the DTA/DTL thing?:D:p:

I make mistakes all the time. The worst is that feeling when you are absolutely sure you're 100% right and then out of left field comes something you never even thought of. Sometimes I just plain have no idea what the hell something means and completely misinterpret it. We're all human, it happens, all we can do is learn from it. Even Buffet only gets 8/10 right. Even in a recent thread with yourself, I ended up going off on some weird tangent that confused me as much as it did yourself!
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Not related.

I just believe that you have to be comfortable at losing the short game if you have any show at winning the long. Dealing with losing and mistakes isn't really discussed much - even though it is incredibly important. Just trying to kick off a discussion.

ps.
I wasn't worng just confussed.:D
[there was one time I thought I was wrong - but it turns out I was mistaken about that.]
 
Ahh yes, mistakes. I recall making one once upon a time, I think it was back in 1991. Never made one since. 100% strike rate.
 
craft said:
I subject myself to forums full of people, many of whom seem to portray that they understand all the variables and never get anything wrong, which seems strange when we are only working with probabilities at best.
Click to expand...

If you are wrong and blow out, then the difference between right and wrong is huge. If you are wrong and lose 0.5% of your account, the difference between right and wrong is only discernible after a larger sample size has been completed.

To me, that's important, and in the case of forums it is too easy to look at an individual making a stream of calls trying to appear omniscient. I usually check the user to try and figure whether they will still be there next week or not.

That's wrong/debug covered anyway :p

I've been stupid plenty of times hehe.
 
I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed
Michael Jordan.
Click to expand...

I've lost more than $150k in my trading career. I've have almost 600 losing trades. 22 times, I've trusted my analysis and got it wrong. I've failed over and over and over again in my trading. And that is why I am broke.
 
craft said:
I just believe that you have to be comfortable at losing the short game if you have any show at winning the long. Dealing with losing and mistakes isn't really discussed much - even though it is incredibly important. Just trying to kick off a discussion.
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Right, sort of like lose a few battles but win the war?

I don't think humans are wired to handle short term loss, the instinct is to cut losses. You can see it in the way markets go down a lot quicker than they go up.

Good topic, BTW.
 
craft said:
So this is just a thread to say I get it wrong and often and I’m proud of it. It makes me what I am.
Click to expand...

Craft, good for you.

Forums like these abound with people claiming to know-all and see-all.

By and large, the bigger the braggart the bigger the lies.

I do worry that newbs come along, read their posts and think it's fair dinkum. The experienced hands know it's all BS.

My goal is to be uniformly wrong over a range of values. For me, that's as good as it gets.
 
McLovin said:
I don't think humans are wired to handle short term loss, the instinct is to cut losses. You can see it in the way markets go down a lot quicker than they go up.
Click to expand...

Good point. For those who think that the squiggly lines (charts) are random, turn a chart upside down and it will look wrong. It won't look like a stock chart at all.

eg. you'd never see a chart doing this:
 

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craft said:
It seems all I ever do is manage my mistakes. If I'm not correcting a mistake of commission then I’m generally thinking about a mistake of omission, in fact I spend so much time consumed in what I could have done better that periodical reviews revealing positive progress to the big picture come as an improbable surprise.

To rub salt into the wound of my daily grind of stuff ups, I subject myself to forums full of people, many of whom seem to portray that they understand all the variables and never get anything wrong, which seems strange when we are only working with probabilities at best.

So this is just a thread to say I get it wrong and often and I’m proud of it. It makes me what I am.

A couple of quotes that help me deal with being human.





Misery loves company. Maybe this thread could be a refuge, a confession for the fallible.
No Omniscient forum posters allowed.
Click to expand...

Well done, great thread.....

You know, if you make mistakes and you learn something.....it's called learning.....if you make the same mistake all the time and never learn expecting a different outcome....now thats just plain crazy!

I'm a bad descretionary trader...in fact if you were to do the opposite of what my gut tells me to do, you would be the winner every time. I'm the typical crowd behavior!

That's why I trade systematically, automatically.

CanOz
 
Thanks craft - I needed something like this after this week that is soon disappearing into negative thoughts.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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My Mantra over the last 5 or 6 years is "I Know Nothing" this has come about because i have come to realise that every time i thought i knew something turns out i was wrong, particularly when it comes to women, relationships and work.

Well not every time...but so many of the big decisions i have made over the last 25 years have turned out to be not so good, mostly well meaning but resulting in out comes that could of been substantially better.
 
Gringotts Bank said:
Good point. For those who think that the squiggly lines (charts) are random, turn a chart upside down and it will look wrong. It won't look like a stock chart at all.

eg. you'd never see a chart doing this:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know what you mean....but I think if you post a chart that made a slow steady climb, then turned it upside down, then it would look a bit more unusual.

I would, but I'm mobile and have not yet figured that one out!

Cheers,


CanOz
 
CanOz said:
You know, if you make mistakes and you learn something.....it's called learning.
Click to expand...

An urban legend believed to be true. In the early days of IBM, an IBM salesman screwed up some big deal that cost the company in the order of $1M, huge in those days. Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, called the salesman in to have a "chat" and explained some of the mistakes the salesman made. Telling him to get back to work, the salesman was perplexed and said to Watson: "Aren't you going to fire me?" To which Watson replied: "Of course not! We just spent a million dollars training you."
 
craft said:
It seems all I ever do is manage my mistakes. If I'm not correcting a mistake of commission then I’m generally thinking about a mistake of omission, in fact I spend so much time consumed in what I could have done better that periodical reviews revealing positive progress to the big picture come as an improbable surprise.

To rub salt into the wound of my daily grind of stuff ups, I subject myself to forums full of people, many of whom seem to portray that they understand all the variables and never get anything wrong, which seems strange when we are only working with probabilities at best.

So this is just a thread to say I get it wrong and often and I’m proud of it. It makes me what I am.

A couple of quotes that help me deal with being human.





Misery loves company. Maybe this thread could be a refuge, a confession for the fallible.
No Omniscient forum posters allowed.
Click to expand...


Phantom of the pits is a good read and an inspiration for me many years ago, just beware of changes or damage leading cognitive dissonance from sustaining losses we are after all human.
 
IFocus said:
...just beware of changes or damage leading cognitive dissonance from sustaining losses we are after all human.
Click to expand...

Please explain!

@ SoCynical, that's a great realization. What about tuning into your intuition, it's much smarter than the intellect. I try to never make big life decisions using the intellect. With trading I use a small part intellect, the rest is gut feel.
 

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